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Special Forums UNIX and Linux Applications Finding the oldest file in a directory without ls Post 302361965 by hiyofjord on Wednesday 14th of October 2009 02:05:42 PM
Old 10-14-2009
Finding the oldest file in a directory without ls

I am trying to determine the oldest and most recent files in a huge directory. I am using an ls -tr statement outside my find statement. The directory is too big and I am getting an "arg list too long" error. Is there something I can put in my find statement that doesn't create a list to determine the earliest and most recent files so I do not have to use ls -tr and head -1 or tail -1. Below is one of the statements that I am trying to use.

firstFilePath=`ls -tr \`find "$fileDir" -name "$fileMask"\*"$fileType" -exec /bin/ls '{}' \;\` | head -1`


Thanks!
 

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EXECUTE(7)                                                         SQL Commands                                                         EXECUTE(7)

NAME
EXECUTE - execute a prepared statement SYNOPSIS
EXECUTE name [ ( parameter [, ...] ) ] DESCRIPTION
EXECUTE is used to execute a previously prepared statement. Since prepared statements only exist for the duration of a session, the pre- pared statement must have been created by a PREPARE statement executed earlier in the current session. If the PREPARE statement that created the statement specified some parameters, a compatible set of parameters must be passed to the EXECUTE statement, or else an error is raised. Note that (unlike functions) prepared statements are not overloaded based on the type or number of their parameters; the name of a prepared statement must be unique within a database session. For more information on the creation and usage of prepared statements, see PREPARE [prepare(7)]. PARAMETERS
name The name of the prepared statement to execute. parameter The actual value of a parameter to the prepared statement. This must be an expression yielding a value that is compatible with the data type of this parameter, as was determined when the prepared statement was created. OUTPUTS
The command tag returned by EXECUTE is that of the prepared statement, and not EXECUTE. EXAMPLES
Examples are given in the Examples [prepare(7)] section of the PREPARE [prepare(7)] documentation. COMPATIBILITY
The SQL standard includes an EXECUTE statement, but it is only for use in embedded SQL. This version of the EXECUTE statement also uses a somewhat different syntax. SEE ALSO
DEALLOCATE [deallocate(7)], PREPARE [prepare(7)] SQL - Language Statements 2010-05-14 EXECUTE(7)
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